Left With no Choice, Vladimir Putin is Looking East
Financial Review
The following is an excerpt from an article by Philipp Ivanov, Asia Society chief programming officer and Asia Society Policy Institute senior fellow, originally published in the Financial Review.
Walking the streets of Vladivostok, you would not know Russia is at war. The only reminders are the posters inviting people to join the Russian army, with an aggressive “Z” replacing a softer Cyrillc “з” in short, sharp calls of duty.
It has been three years since I have been back in the city where I was born and grew up. I still call it home, even though it has been two decades since I lived here. Everything seems familiar, but I am now almost an outsider.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is in town for the Eastern Economic Forum, his brainchild to create a global platform to drive investment and trade between Asia and Russia’s vast but underdeveloped eastern regions.
His speech at the forum did not mention Ukraine by name, but it was all about Ukraine. His combative denunciation of the Western sanctions was followed by an affirmation of Asia’s global economic weight and praise for its pragmatic approach to Russia.
Outside, you would not know that Vladivostok is deep in north-east Asia — much closer to Tokyo, Seoul and Beijing than to Moscow. It feels more Russian than usual this summer. The normally ubiquitous Chinese traders and tourists are nowhere to be seen, forced back to China by Beijing’s rigid zero-COVID policy. No international flights use Vladivostok airport. The only way to get here from Australia is to fly via Dubai and Moscow, a journey half-way around the world.
Vladivostok, which translates as “protector of the east,” has for most of its history been a military outpost on the hostile Eastern frontier, reluctant to embrace its proximity to the great nations of Asia.
However, in the mid-2000s, Russia embarked on a pivot to Asia, driven by the belief that it was the new center of the global economy, unburdened by the history of confrontation which marks Russia’s relationships with the West.